[rasz]

>standards for image quality increased very quickly

In 1997 as long as game started at all and you could more or less see whats going on it was considered ok and probably not a scam. It was a time of "accelerators" like Matrox with no texturing support, S3 running slower than in fully software mode, with most vendors missing crucial blending modes and filtering.

vlaskcz has a great Youtube series called "Worst Game Graphics Cards" and its pretty much every single vendor that isnt 3dfx up to 1998. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0ljjj4LTDc&list=PLOeoPVvEK8...